The primary objective of prior art speech encoding has been directed toward improving efficiency and robustness in the transmission of digitized speech signals and enabling verbatim (i.e., artifact free) reproduction of these same signals. Wideband speech coding techniques providing 8 KHz dynamic range (using 16 KHz sampling) or higher have enabled a higher fidelity in digitized speech communication. The entire process has been focused around network optimization and reproduction of speech at the receiving end to the benefit of human listeners. However as IP networks have increased in size (for example, as to easily carry high bandwidth video), optimizing bandwidth of associated speech signals has become of relatively lower value and of lower priority.